THE OPPORTUNITY TO DEVELOP NEW WORK IN ANOTHER COUNTRY AND culture
with the use of a fully equipped ceramics workshop is not something to
be missed. This opportunity had arisen after showing work at the 2012
Biennale at the Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan. The invitation to make
an application to the residency programme was timely. I felt that I
wanted to question and stretch my work, to put myself into new areas, to
be uncomfortable both physically and mentally, out of my normal skin.

Of course even if you are a conceptual artist, work has to come
from somewhere and any new developments will have references and
reactions to previous works. They are not only bounded by time and place
but by your own inhibitions and self-imposed restrictions. I wanted to
see what might happen if my work was allowed to develop in a free
flowing way exploring new ways to make form. The outcomes of such a
residency, unlike the iconic pieces in a museum are not always
immediately accessible or even comprehensible.

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Much of my sculpture in the past 10 years has been made in
complicated, laborious ways with forms emerging in a handbuilding clay
stage and then being refined through casting, carving, recasting and
finishing. Given the six-week period that I was able to spend in Taiwan
I wanted to make work using a different approach.

The residency facility was not part of the general museum galleries
but curious visitors would wander in to the studios. Questions would be
asked initially about process, how something had been made. This then
could lead on to a conversation about what I thought my residency was
about which I illustrated by my documentation via my tablet and it gave
them an opportunity and time to take in the strange collection of moulds
and forms around me. What they were viewing was a process of discovery
and uncertainty, things lacking a clear story, within the context of a
museum full of finished accredited artefacts. The museum could also now
perhaps be seen as a place for new creativity, could in fact nurture it.

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I needed to make decisions about what I was making and what it
might convey and emote, to find a process that could be malleable,
changeable and be developed to produce images or forms that could
surprise, involve an element of chance and accident and that I could
modify all throughout the process of making. I like working with plaster
and the fact that liquid becomes caught in a shape during setting. So
the first steps of my engagement with process were investigating
pressure and tension. I had taken a sheet of thin rubber with me to
Taiwan with the thought that it could be a starting point to cast a
number of shapes and make some forms that I did not have to model,
pieces that had life and tension to them--some sort of dynamic. My brief
was to try to be open but with many years of ceramic making, my
experience could and would be brought to bear on both practical and
aesthetic problems.

My next decision was to try to simplify and to make forms that
could be repeated, thus allowing me to explore surface and colour. I
thought that the rubber sheet would make beautiful folded and stretched
forms but perhaps too complicated to deal with in the time I had. I hit
on the idea that a balloon or contained skin form could provide the
elements that I was interested in: expansion, tension, malleability,
simplicity and uncertainty. I sourced some Taiwanese balloons and began
to inflate and stretch them. It struck me that I had found an
interesting link with thrown forms. Throwing is all about stretching and
compression and it is the stretching (the pressure on the inside of the
form) that often gives the piece life. I was thinking about capturing
this so that the work would have an emotional life.

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The next decision was whether to try to cast from a balloon
directly or to use the balloon as an intermediate form. I decided the
latter because then I had a more durable form to work on and I could
also distort them by subjecting them to stress, stretching, squashing,
pulling and twisting.

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I set up a frame to which I tied strings that could be attached to
the balloon or used to pull the form in different ways. The first forms
that I cast were hollow and made by pouring plaster into the balloon
through a funnel. The balloon l was then inflated and the form rotated
as the plaster set. This made some interesting simple forms but I could
not distort or stretch them. Most of the forms from the second attempt
were solid and made by forcing plaster into the balloon from a polythene
bag fitted with a nozzle. This enabled me to expand the form to any size
as well as stretch and distort the piece. It also gave me a solid
plaster form, which I could alter or carve after the piece was set.

I would first inflate a balloon with air, then pull it and stretch
it until I had a fair idea that it might be interesting to me. The next
stage involved timing; timing the plaster mixes then the stringing up of
the filled rubber skins before the set began. H The involvement was
direct with immediate decisions being made, constantly regarding the Hi
form in space. These were suspended, caught, abstract forms being pulled
this way and that. Each day for a week I made several which were then
sorted on an intuitive basis.

They were interesting as plaster forms, sometimes with traces of
their rubbery skins left on them, why should they be made in ceramic? I
also liked the evidence of making. They had perfection in their
imperfections; small creases odd holes. They had the perfection and
imperfections of creation. I wondered if they needed to be made in
ceramic?

My question about whether to make them in ceramic has still not
been fully answered. Perhaps some will remain as plaster in the future
or be combined with ceramic forms. On reaching this point I decided two
things, firstly that as the residency was about uncertainty I should
fire some just to see how I felt about transforming them--changing their
immediate nature. Secondly, if they were to be finally ceramic, they had
to prove themselves as having merit when transformed from plaster into
fired ceramic.

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I went ahead with some moulds for slipcasting, then struggled to
make a casting slip with the clays available. An interesting effect
occurred when I tried to put large amounts of stain or oxide in the
slip--it set like custard powder. Sometimes this would resolve itself
after a day's standing and also I had often to adjust the
deflocculants significantly and allow them to re-adjust with time. I was
also a little concerned that shrinkage of the forms in firing would rob
the plaster forms of their expansive life.

The shrinkage did indeed do something; it sharpened their
extremities and exposed the process of moulding and casting. When you
cast an object you have to divide the form spatially into sections. The
process sometimes feels rather like Cubism. This sectioning becomes a
feature of the finished piece and often shows as a subtle raised line.
The higher the piece is fired the more this effect can be seen. These
lines become part of composition and can add as well as detract from the
fired work.

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As the forms had interesting qualities I chose initially to stain
the slip with oxides to maintain their surfaces and lines. I had not
used much glaze on my work for several years but it occurred to me that
perhaps if I called the glaze something different such as wetness,
glisten, transition, shine, slough, that I might change my reason for
including glaze in the vocabulary I was evolving. It was also another
way to engage with light falling on the pieces. The slip, which I chose
to stick with, was a mixture of porcelain and semi porcelain clays that
became vitrified at 1180[degrees]C. At higher temperatures some pieces
slumped, distorted and lost the tension I liked, some acquired new
tensions.

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I chose to keep within the confines of a small, computerised kiln,
that I could fire every few days at differing temperatures, I knew from
experience that being able to fire work in small batches gives a good
understanding of the clay bodies and glazes. It also allows you to
modify each firing as you gain knowledge. By the end of the residency, I
had generated a number of abstract forms that were directly produced and
which suggested the possibility for change, for grouping and interplay
with each other. They were families of forms.

The crucial effect of the residency was to force me to look
creatively at how I worked and to question as well as accept at times
free flowing intuitive approaches. I was also beginning to think about
the works context; whether different environments for the work could
change the meaning of a group and if I should regard the entire outcome
as more of an installation.

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I noticed that I was checking my thoughts to see if my reactions
and decisions were merely learned norms. Too much questioning can lead
to immobilising uncertainty but as I was dealing also with process I was
an observer and intrigued with how I felt about new things and whether I
could make use of the uncertainties that are produced by a development
in a process. The challenge was to step back and not dismiss things
immediately but to let a new thing sit with you until you could
sometimes instinctively give it the opportunity for a visual life.

In many ways I was at ease with living and working in the museum
and the pottery town of Yingge. I was surrounded by things I knew or
recognised; a pottery and ceramics material culture. This gave a
conversation and shared understanding of commitment to an activity and
the plastic possibilities of clay. At the same time I was interested in
the transformation of the town and its reinvention as a handmade pottery
centre from its more industrial past. Change and transformation fitted
in with my project's aims.

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I see the experience and the work produced as not only about the
finished work but also an attitude to work, which will develop and
evolve over the coming year. I intend to continue my documentation and
this will be part of my idea for the residency and its outcomes, which I
call "Mining Uncertainty".

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Ian Byers was born in Birmingham, England in 1947 and started his
ceramics training during the late 1960s at the Central School of Art in
London. He has taught, lectured and exhibited throughout the UK, Europe
and the Far East. His work has developed from a vessel and figurative focus through to a more abstract minimalist sensibility.

All photos by Ian Byers.

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